


𝖉𝖊𝖆𝖉 𝖘𝖚𝖓 𝖗𝖎𝖘𝖎𝖓𝖌

by thefriendyouleftinthehallway



Category: Dracula (Movies - Hammer)
Genre: Blood Drinking, Blood Kink, Homoeroticism, M/M, Purple Prose, occasionally, rarepair?, to be perfectly honest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:40:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25440271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefriendyouleftinthehallway/pseuds/thefriendyouleftinthehallway
Summary: idk what this is really. it's super ooc and doesn't comply that well to canon but i wanted some,, blood drinking and homoeroticism, is that so wrong?
Relationships: Van Helsing/Dracula
Comments: 4
Kudos: 29





	1. i've watched stars falling

**Author's Note:**

> title and chap. titles from gary numan's [dead sun rising](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51fzgrpspWE).

Despite the stifling silence, a cacophony of phantom screams echoed in his ears. 

He walked to the castle, a man who had lost; lost everything. He hadn’t heard the name in at least… it must have been ten years. In fact, he knew it was. He had taken note of the month, the day, the  _ hour  _ Dracula had fallen to dust. He had stood for hours and watched as the wind slowly blew the creature away, until he was  _ nothing _ . 

But once more the people talk, and he gets letters. Risen, they say, from destruction.  _ Dracula _ . 

After all this time. Time in which he had allowed himself something quiet and gentle; a wife, and a son. But the time it had taken him to acquire such a special thing was tenfold what it had taken to lose it, and his wife became ashen-faced, the sweat cooling on her skin. His son was born that way. 

And it seemed as if his long, long journey was nothing at all, and his feet carried him quite separate from his will, towards the castle he had long ago chosen to forget (of course, it had never left his dreams). 

He pushed the castle door open, knowing it would be unlocked, if ever the weary, stupid traveller should pass by. 

Perhaps, he thought, the wretched creature had recognised his presence in the castle, for no sooner than he had arrived in the main room, that hauntingly familiar silhouette appeared at the top of the stairs. The mere sight of it pulled all the air from his lungs and he fell to his knees as if in worship -- though he was not in worship, never of this vile thing that looked to be a man. 

Dracula’s face was illuminated by the candle-light as he glided to the base of the staircase. 

“Doctor,” the vampire said in greeting. His tone was cordial, as if Van Helsing was an old acquaintance. 

“Count Dracula,” the man breathed as he pulled himself to his feet. 

He looked at the vampire with his eyes slightly narrowed in an appraising sort of way, as if he were curious. But behind that look, at the core of the watery blue of his eyes, there was a defeated, broken sort of truth. 

He pulled loose his cravat, and let it and the stiff white collar drop to the floor. Then he unbuttoned the first few fixtures on his shirt. He pulled the fabric away from his neck and bared it boldly toward Dracula, his entire body acquiescent. Yielding. 

But unlike what he expected, Dracula did not pounce on him like an animal, or bare his fangs likewise. Instead, he fixed Van Helsing with an appraising look that would mirror the man’s moments prior, and said nothing. He stood and  _ looked _ , as if curious. Yet he held the air of a god silently watching the mortals, fascinated by the strange things which they do. 

“What, vampire?” demanded Van Helsing almost desperately. “Do you not wish to kill me? Or do you simply draw delight from watching your pitiful prey humiliate itself before you strike?” 

“Why have you come here?” asked Dracula cooly, in that couth British tone that so contrasted his true nature. 

“I needn’t say it out loud,” Van Helsing said quietly, but Dracula’s eyes seemed to bore into his soul. The intensity of the look drew the words from his mouth. “I want you to--” he choked on his words, but then he managed to spit them out. “To kill me.” 

“You have sought a death that surely you will despise, that goes against your nature. And you expect me to facilitate, without knowing  _ why  _ you would do such an… incongruent thing?” 

Van Helsing swallowed. Each word that fell from Dracula’s mouth made him seem less of an animal, more of a man. It was bizarre to have a conversation with this creature. As bizarre as it would have been to have a conversation with a fire as it devoured your home; only the fire held no cruelty or malicious intent. 

“I have nothing,” Van Helsing said. 

“You have lost something,” Dracula said. “But why come here? Why be so… pliant?” 

Van Helsing shook his head.  _ I don’t know, _ he seemed to say.  _ I don’t know. _

Eventually, Dracula spoke once more. “It will hurt,” he said (to which Van Helsing nodded), “but you will like it.”

This, Van Helsing narrowed his eyes at. But he did not speak. He waited for the vampire to act. 

And then he did. With bizarre strength, the vampire lifted Van Helsing from the ground and onto the table. The man’s breath hitched and his eyes widened. He found himself arching his back as Dracula pushed him roughly down. 

The vampire was ominous, but oddly gentle at first. Poisonously sweet. He leant down ever so slowly, gazing steadily into Van Helsing’s eyes. He brushed his lips past his, touching ever so slightly. 

His face was close enough to Van Helsing’s that the man could feel the strange coldness radiating from his skin, as though Dracula’s temperature itself were reaching out to caress him. 

Van Helsing wondered if it wasn’t annoying to the vampire, the sound of his heart beating this fast and loud. Or if perhaps it was exhilarating. 

When Dracula bit down, it didn’t feel like he expected. Rather than pain, rather than the cold evil of not-quite-death, rather than all the horrible things he had expected… 

Instead he was met with a warmth that gave such an oddly pure feeling of euphoria he could barely believe it. He found himself pushing his body up towards the vampire, baring his neck even more as the vampire continued to draw his blood. 

Dracula’s hands brushed carefully though his hair, as if he were being delicate with Van Helsing. Van Helsing felt his arms come up and wrap around the vampire almost of their own volition. Grasping tightly at his robes, scratching over the flesh of Dracula’s back through the fabric. 

When the vampire froze, Van Helsing felt a paralysing second of fear that he’d committed some atrocity, something the vampire found repulsive, and that he was about to be punished. But then he felt the odd sensation of Dracula relaxing onto him, almost melting in his grip. 

But it was all too short-lived. His thoughts lost coherency, his body lost movement, and after everything, there was only calm. 

His body tingled with an alien warmth, a preternatural delight that could have only stemmed from this. All too soon it was over, yes, but he was dazed and delectated -- in a way, he had been pleasured, though not in a dirty manner, despite the fact the Devil himself was probably laughing at him from Hell -- and his whole self seemed near delirious with that lethargic ecstasy. Easily he slipped into the dark.


	2. i've watched gods bleeding

When he awoke he was entirely surprised to find himself alive. More surprised still to find that the warm sun danced easily across his skin; he was human, at least for now. 

He found, in the unfamiliar bedroom, with the afternoon sun streaming through the curtains, that he was overtaken by drowsiness, and fell asleep once more. 

When he awoke for the second time, he startled to see Dracula’s shining eyes staring down at him, his figure framed by the moonlight from the window. 

“You will note,” the vampire said, “that your heart still beats. You are free to go, if you wish.” 

Van Helsing brushed his fingers over his neck, but felt no scar there. “No,” he said. “No.”

Dracula’s face flickered with a smile for a brief moment, almost smugly. But then it was gone, and he swept out of the room in a billow of black silk. 

Dracula drank from Van Helsing every night, and to the man’s astonishment, each and every time he woke up, alive, and human. 

However, it might have been weeks or it might have been months (the perpetual blood-loss kept him in a daze -- it was so hard to tell how much time was passing) Dracula offered something more. He knelt before Van Helsing at the dinner table, and sliced into the inhuman, pale flesh of his own wrist with an eloquent dagger. 

In a way, Van Helsing wondered if this was what it meant to be a vampire. Of course, he was still human. But he was mesmerised by the blood of Dracula; the sight of it, the smell which seemed to cling in the air unlike anything else he knew. 

“Drink,” Dracula urged, “and you will be free.” 

It gave him pause; the first he’d had in weeks. It was as Dracula has said, perhaps, on that first night.  _ A death that surely you would despise _ . 

He touched his own lips with his fingertips. His head felt perpetually faint all the time he’d been there. Now more than ever, though, the world spun around him. 

Everything else blurred. Dracula’s wrist came into high focus, as if the anchor of the universe lay in the crimson that trickled in branching, parting rivers towards the crook of the vampire’s elbow. 

It glistened in the candle light, glittering softly as the flow carried on. It was mesmeric. Anything might have happened then; Van Helsing would not have noticed. 

_ That goes against your nature _ , Dracula had said. But now, the blood. The thought of drinking it; of having it on his lips, his tongue, down his throat. It was perhaps the most natural thing he had ever known; the most instinctual drive. 

As if he were a vampire himself.  _ Is this what he feels?  _ Van Helsing wondered.  _ Is this what blood is, to Dracula?  _

He couldn’t have stopped himself. Not if he wanted to, not if he were shackled to the wall twenty yards away. He grasped Dracula’s arm firmly, not daring to look him in the eyes. 

He knelt on the floor before the other. Held the arm to his mouth. And then he licked. He started at the outermost trails, up the smooth pale flesh of Dracula’s arm, towards the wound. 

And again. Gently, slowly, licking clean the elegant blood, that ran the colour of wine but glistened vermillion. Until the only scarlet shade in sight was the dribbling slice itself.

A pause, his eyes flickering to meet the vampire’s. He found himself oddly satisfied, despite his situation, to find surprise in Dracula’s cold, dark eyes. Surprise and curiosity, but no disapproval. If anything it was clear he was intrigued. 

Van Helsing’s eyes flicked back down to meet that hypnotic gash of red. And after a beat, he leant down and fixed his lips around it. Though before he had been transfixed on the  _ action  _ of licking it from Dracula’s skin, now all his focus was on the taste. 

There was that inherent copper, yes, that all blood presents. That normal, typical flavour one knows from scuffed knees and bloodied noses. But then, something more. Something sweet, irresistible. Something that made him latch on and  _ bite _ , with his own blunt teeth, into Dracula’s wrist. 

Disturbingly as a babe would, on its mother’s breast, coaxing forth the milk that gave it life. This didn’t feel like that; it was nowhere near as pure and simple. There was no life to this, only the inverse. Only death. Death and pleasure. 

It seemed to invoke some nature which felt… at home, as if it had always been there, but buried deep. So, so deep. Pulled to the surface. Some nature of insatiability, voracious ravenousness, that perhaps had been lurking, firmly dormant, amongst his most primitive instincts. 

The thirst, once again, felt natural. Instinctual. As if it belonged, as if  _ this  _ was all that was right in the world. This, and the reverse, with each in the other’s place. 

This sanguinary bond, blood and flesh and all that life meant, yet all cold and lacking and dead. It seemed… familiar. It wasn’t conventional, but there was something quite hard to describe, almost as if it was fitting. 

He noticed then that Dracula was pulling away. That, he protested. He clung on. But the vampire, his strength surpassing Van Helsing’s, pulled away. 

“No,” said the Englishman. 

But then he took note of something else. The vampire stumbled a moment, quite paler than he should have been -- although, Van Helsing supposed, he had been seeing the man most frequently sated with blood lately, and that brought the flush of false life to his cheeks. 

It was quite bizarre to see the creature so enfeebled, from something as human, as  _ known  _ to him as loss of blood. 

Dracula fell down to the floor; he could not stand. Van Helsing then came up upon him, gently crawling over to hover above him on hands and knees, the positions reversed, and leant down to Dracula’s wrist, the wound healing -- fast, incredibly fast for a human; before his very eyes -- but seemingly slow. 

Dracula seemed panicked then, like some kind of terrorised alleycat, as he fought to pull his white wrist away from Van Helsing’s red mouth; but he stopped once the man’s lips met his skin. It was soft and gentle. Van Helsing licked slightly, but peppered the wrist with small kisses, slight touches of his lips, until it was healed. 

So Dracula looked up, his intense gaze boring into Van Helsing. 

“May I?” he asked, again in the oddly couth British tone. 

Van Helsing didn’t nod. He rolled off of Dracula and allowed the vampire to crawl over him, lowering his face to his neck. 

This time, however, the vampire pressed a delicate, lingering kiss to the corner of the other’s mouth. It was cold, but quite alive. Van Helsing bit his tongue on a gasp in reaction, but he didn’t hold back on that count when Dracula bit down; allowing a breathy inhalation -- which the vampire seemed pleased by, as he held Van Helsing tighter than usual. 


	3. i've watched worlds burn

When he woke up this time, all was different. He drifted into consciousness, and somehow  _ knew  _ that it was the tail-end of sunset. His surroundings were cold and hard. His breath stalled and jerked until he realised it was arbitrary; there was no reason to breathe. 

The crypt was dark -- he could tell through his eyelids -- and incredibly cold. Cold that went right down into his bones; but he didn’t care. It didn’t bother him. Rather; it felt quite comfortable. As if things were meant to be this way. 

For the first time since death, he opened his eyes. He lay in a stone casket in the basement mausoleum, dirt beneath him. Carpathian dirt, where he had died. That, too, seemed right. 

He pulled himself out, and stood beside. It was then he noticed that Dracula was already awake, watching him appraisingly. But as he met the vampire’s gaze, Dracula came toward him, and held his face in both hands. 

Dracula seemed to be gazing into his eyes, but not from sentiment. No, he stared directly into Van Helsing’s eyes, pupils darting back and forth fervently, searching for something. 

Van Helsing opened his mouth, and Dracula froze. “I… I still hurt,” whispered the Englishman, pressing a hand to his chest, above his heart. 

Dracula didn’t smile, but he no longer searched Van Helsing’s gaze. Instead, ge leaned down, and pressed a clean, commanding kiss to his lips. 

“You are yourself,” the original vampire said. 

It wasn’t hushed, but it was quiet. His voice consisted of breath, and trips and stumbles over gravel. It conveyed care somehow. 

“Why?” Van Helsing asked. “How?”

“The women…” Dracula said. “Some have been known to call them my brides. They are mistakes; most who are bitten will simply die, you see? But this… contagion. It spreads. When I can find them, I confine them. Some I kill. Others I care for. I did not want you to be the same. I hoped, with my blood, you would retain your soul. And so, it appears, you have.”

Van Helsing did not respond. Instead he allowed Dracula to take him by the hand, and lead him up into the main hall. There, at the dining table, was a young man. 

Van Helsing did not know his face. 

“A weary traveller,” Dracula said. “They pass by often; too often for their own good. You may charm him. Bite him. You needn’t kill him, though I should warn -- it is your first time: you probably will.”

“No,” Van Helsing declared. 

“Time will pass,” Dracula insisted impatiently. “You will not care then.”

“But I care now,” Van Helsing argued. 

“A wise man once told me that the tragedy of murder is that it is less painful every repeat, despite many a word to the contrary from embarrassed practicers. He too now rests deep in his grave, yet the world still turns. Do you question that wisdom, or your need to live? Lives sustain. His life. Who do you value more; him, or yourself? Make a choice, and continue to make it. That is all.” 

Van Helsing would have pondered the choice, in the shadows hidden from the view of the man at the table. He would have stood and thought, debated for hundreds of years perhaps, until he reached a conclusion; for the predicament was so great. 

He did not get to. 

“Ah!” the stranger said. 

The knife slipped from the loaf he’d been cutting, and tore his flesh open; shallow, on the finger. 

At once, from across the room, Van Helsing became all too aware of the human’s heartbeat. When he looked up at Dracula, the original vampire’s eyes were reddened, and his fangs were bared. 

Van Helsing could barely restrain himself, and he knew that while he must look the same as Dracula, Dracula must feel the same as him. Fangs brushed the inside of the once-human’s mouth, gently grazing his flesh. 

As soon as Van Helsing stepped out of the shadow, Dracula cowered behind his cape as if trying to hide from the smell of blood; to stop himself going mad for it. 

Van Helsing had no such item of clothing. He marched towards the stranger, fangs hidden awkwardly inside his mouth. 

“Hello there,” the stranger said. “You must be the other one the Count spoke of. Tell me, are you--”

Van Helsing bared his fangs. 

“In God’s name--” the stranger breathed. 

But Van Helsing fixed him with a stare, and he stopped. He didn’t look away from his eyes as he leant down toward the man’s neck, and bit. 

Dracula was clean, neat. It must be from all the centuries of practice, for Van Helsing made a mess. As the blood flowed out, it spilled from his mouth, dripping down his chin like the juice of a fruit, staining his clothes heavily. 

When he pulled away, Dracula was there. He embraced Van Helsing; a comfort, if it was only to hold him still while the original vampire licked the blood from his lips. 


End file.
